The invention relates to an integrated optics component with polarization effect comprising a substrate, at least one light wave guiding waveguide formed at the level of the substrate and designed to transmit a light wave applied to an input of the light wave guiding waveguide, and, at the level of the substrate, at least one segmented plane waveguide arranged laterally with respect to the light wave guiding waveguide and formed by a plurality of lateral waveguides parallel to one another, separated from one another by a space and forming a right angle with a longitudinal axis of the light wave guiding waveguide.
In a large number of applications using optical sensors and high bit-rate optical transmission devices, it is essential to have a well-defined state of polarization of the light wave. Moreover, the polarization sensitivity of anisotropic integrated optical components designed for use in optical switches, commutators, filters and amplifiers is a serious problem which can be overcome by using devices enabling the polarization to be modified.
The document U.S. Pat. No. 4,778,234 describes an integrated optical polarizing device with spatial polarization separation. In this device, interaction regions are obtained by modifying the material of a substrate, itself highly anisotropic, in controlled manner by doping or ion substitution. Doping of the interaction regions is performed in such a way that these regions have an index respectively lower than and higher than those of a light wave guiding waveguide for first and second polarization directions. In this way, the component of a wave having the second polarization direction ceases to be guided.
In this type of device, the light corresponding to one of the polarizations is eliminated and can no longer be recovered. There is consequently a loss of energy and, in certain cases, a loss of information. This type of device only enables two polarizations to be separated, but does not in any case enable a rotation of polarization to be performed.